Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/52567

KEYWORDS : Amur River basin;fox;hunting;sable;Sakhalin

In this brief paper I will discuss the socio-economic background of the changes in circulating routes of sable and silver fox fur and techniques for hunting these animals in the Circum-Okhotsk Sea region, beginning in the seventeenth century. Sable fur and silver fox fur were highly appreciated by the Chinese, Mongolians, and Manchurians, as well as the European people. According to the historical records of the Qing dynasty (the last and largest Manchurian-established dynasty in Chinese history), the dynasty imported a large amount of sable fur and silver fox fur from the present Lower Amur region and Sakhalin. Documents show that when the dynasty had just been established at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it promptly began to organize the people into “fur tribute payers.” The sable and silver fox pelts were a politically and economically important strategic commodity for the people in northeast Asia. The Qing government determined that every household of the tribute payers had to pay a piece of sable fur each year, while the government gave them, in turn, a set of rewards that consisted of cotton and silk costumes and a certain amount of cotton cloth. It also decided that those who paid 304 pieces of sable fur, 2 pieces of highest quality fur (black fox), 2 sheets of carpet made of medium quality fur (yellow-blue fox) and 4 sheets of carpet of normal quality fur (red fox) were able to marry the daughters of Manchurian officers and become kin to Manchurian aristocrats. Local hunters in the Lower Amur basin and Sakhalin made every effort to develop techniques that enabled them to acquire more sable and fox in superior conditions. Fundamentally their hunting methods and tools consisted of using traps. They used nets, dead fall traps, and snare traps, which were able to capture fur-bearing animals causing little damage. No imperfection was permitted because the users were the imperial family of China. At the same time the people of the Lower Amur region quested for another way to access the fur resource. They noticed that the Japanese were eager to buy silk costumes and cloth in return for providing high quality fur, not appreciating the value of sable and fox fur. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Lower Amur region people developed trading routes from northeastern China to Sakhalin and Hokkaido and enthusiastically engaged through the Ainu in trade activities with the Japanese. Starting in this century, Japan became a fur export country. Situations drastically changed in the middle of the nineteenth century, when modern countries like Imperial Russia and modernized Japan accessed the regions. Modernism radically changed the local hunter’s methods, equipment, and values of hunting for fur-bearing animals. Moreover, it changed the status of the local people from the privileged tribute payer to the poor “primitive” hunter-gatherers.